Stethoscopes

Don’t stress out about stethoscopes!

Stethoscopes and what to do about them causes many of us a lot of unnecessary anxiety. One of the most helpful tips I have been given by other deaf and hard of hearing health professionals is not to stress out about auscultation. It’s only a small part of our work and likely to be perfectly possible.

Some electronic stethoscopes can be used with or without hearing aids and some can give a visual display. And depending on your hearing impairment and preferences, you may not need an electronic stethoscope.

There’s no “one size fits all” solution and once you know a bit about heart and lung sounds in relation to your audiogram and your hearing aids or implant if you have them, you’ll have a good idea what’s going to suit you.

The decision begins with two questions: do you need amplification? And do you want to keep your hearing aids in when you use a stethoscope? To tailor your choice to your own situation and preferences begin at “Do I need amplification” and follow the links through.

Once you have a good idea of your options, you may also want to get two stethoscopes for a trial period so you can compare them. Trying out different configurations such as headphones and eartips as well.

Once you’ve read these pages, I hope you’ll have a good idea of what you’d like to try. Feel free to contact me if you have further questions or are having difficulty getting set up.

Thinklabs has also produced some helpful information. See their brief introduction here and options for using a stethoscope with hearing aids here.

There’s an excellent article in the Hearing Review here (though it’s got a wrong table online at the moment. I’m trying to contact them to replace it) and an article here from Audiology Online. Both are useful for audiologists and for deaf and HoH health professionals ourselves. They are quite old so some of the stethoscopes they mention may not be available now and there are new ones on the market.

2 thoughts on “Stethoscopes”

I’m not a supplier. Do read my posts about stethoscopes to help you work out what is good for you try first. If you’d like some advice following that, feel free to contact me.

You may prefer to use the contact form rather than comments. I’ll need some information about your hearing and any aids or implants you use. So you may prefer the privacy of the contact form that comes direct to me.